Claravox Centennial- known issues, bugs and quirks

Had my Theremin repaired by Moog came back to me. Played it for a while with no issues. Then one day zerobeat was unobtainable & I had to completely recalibrate the unit. Than today I had it on mute & flipped the switch to active & nothing happened. The mute light remained on no matter how many times I tried to go to active mode. Turning the instrument off & back on fixed the problem...for now. 

But I’m concerned about the long term reliability of these. 

Evening. Before I contact Moog, just in case this issue rings a bell to anyone here:

* my claravox stopped producing any sound all of a sudden (on halloween night…). The instrument was on mute whilst I was looking for a next tune to play along, so this isn’t the result of me changing any settings 

* the ‘mute’ LED isn’t showing anymore, regardless of what I do with the mute switch 

* the ‘set root’ is permanently on. Nothing I do turns it off, including press and hold 

* the ‘store’ LED is flashing. Again, nothing I can do to stop it from doing so (short of turning the theremin off…). This looks a bit like when initially calibrating 

I have tried using the app to set back to factory settings, as well as resetting CV value to default. No luck there. 

Am I missing something obvious?

Update on the issue above. Caveat: I’m not techie. This is just to build up the knowledge database around troubleshooting claravox issues. If I misuse a technical term, please bear with. 

* on the light flashing issue. Solid ‘set root’ and flashing ‘store’, this has been sorted with the help of Moog. It was a software/firmware issue that needed reloading. This was addressed by re-plugging the claravox to the iOS app (after several replugging, it eventually triggered a: ‘incomplete update. Restart update?’)
Long story short, LEDs are now behaving as expected, including the mute one which seemed inactive previously

* this has not however resolved the ‘no sound’ issue, which is still being investigated. Hoping to troubleshoot with Moog as soon as possible. I am wondering if this could be resolved with the sandpapering technique used for the early serial numbers, but not going to attempt it until instructed… 

It was a software/firmware issue that needed reloading. This was addressed by re-plugging the claravox to the iOS app (after several replugging, it eventually triggered a: ‘incomplete update. Restart update?’)

which is ok if you have an Apple device - Not sure how the rest of us would sort it tho

Final episode of the Silent Theremin is that the second issue around having no sound was due to poor physical connection of the antenna. I didn’t have to sand (I might still do it), but when reinserting the volume antenna, I just gave it an extra push. Temperamental little thing they are. 

@gingercat, FWIW, I think this instrument absolutely requires the user to have access to an iOS device. Between firmware updates, software issues, and the whole catalogue of sound options, you’d miss out on quite a bit, not least the ability to fix bugs. 

Hi from Italy, this is my first post.
I have a Claravox #00270, it had ve volume antenna issue that has been solved by the store's technical staff.

It has another issue: if I connect to my Mac I can use the Claravox app, all working fine.
If I connect to my iPad it says the Claravox has an incomplete firmware update. I restart update and it fails,
so I can't use it with an Ipad. I hope they will release a new firmware.

I love Moog for his sound and his history but I'm very disappointed.

Try uninstalling the app on your iPad and reinstalling it. It solved the firmware update issue for me. 

I tried, it woked!

Thank you Guillaume!

I see some folks complaining about sound bleed in traditional mode.  Reportedly, one person recently sent their Cvox back to Moog for just this.  Moog shipped it back largely unchanged and told them that's just how the Cvox traditional mode "works".

I see some folks complaining about sound bleed in traditional mode.  Reportedly, one person recently sent their Cvox back to Moog for just this.  Moog shipped it back largely unchanged and told them that's just how the Cvox traditional mode "works".

Yep, this person was me, if you're talking about the FB thread. The technician was very nice but said he'd gotten multiple people there involved and the final consensus was that they could be more stringent with some of the non-user-facing calibrations (which they said were accessible through the iPad app), but that there was nothing at the component level they could do.

After a day of playing with it I've found that by turning my amp down a little and playing with a wider range of the dynamic range of the volume circuit that I had been, that I can minimize traditional mode bleed. So I think that their tweaks helped make it more playable but definitely didn't bring it up to a really acceptable professional standard.

I suspect that having the option to play in "traditional mode" was a little bit of an afterthought and Moog expected folks to stay primarily in modern, which is a disappointment for those of us hoping for an Etherwave Pro experience on that side of the instrument.